Culture

Must Take the PlungeThe Annual Polar Bear Plunge is Here!Thursday (1/1, 12 p.m.) It’s an age-old tradition that requires a steely resolve—and a warm robe to step into as you emerge from the wintry water. Psych yourself up and jump into Lake Washington at Matthews Beach Park (at noon) or at another favorite splashy spot.Must HearSeattle Symphony Performs Beethoven’s Ninth

The Washington State Department of Transportation says that the deep-bore tunnel project in Seattle is 70 percent done. The basis of that claim, apparently, is that they’ve spent 70 percent of the money they intended to spend, even though the tunnel machine Bertha is broken, at least a year behind schedule, and has only tunneled 11 percent of the distance she is expected to go.

he aim of making cities more bike friendly has traditionally focused on the streets—striping, signals and barriers, that sort of thing. But this year The Bike Design Project (oregonmanifest.com), a nonprofit innovation platform in Portland, took aim at the velocipedes themselves with a national competition to inspire bike designs that strive to do no less than “reshape urban mobility.”

Improvements in the human condition often begin with a single person endowed with an extra dose of courage, determined to do the right thing in the face of obstacles and naysayers for the benefit of the many. Seattle magazine is proud to partner with Crosscut to present the second annual Crosscut Courage Awards. Meet the local business, public service and cultural leaders whose personal and professional dedication is making our region more vital, equitable and inclusive.BUSINESS COURAGE WINNER

Crickets for dinner. Buses filled with pot smoke. Good karma. Our annual review of the high points and low lights of the year. For more Best and Worst 2014 articles go here, plus read about the 2014 Crosscut Award winners.

LegalHave your cake and eat it, too (yum, cake!) with cannabis-infused cold-brew coffee. Perfect for: viewing Peter Jackson’s 11-hour extended-edition Lord of the Rings trilogy. Also available in full-chill form, as a non-caffeinated, spliff-enhanced sparkling soda. Warning: If you hear something go bump in your pantry, it might not be because you’re baked. Overly yeasted bottles of the pot-pomegranate flavor have been known to explode. $19, from Mirth Provisions in Longview, Washington

Punxsutawney Phil tends to (ground)hog all the attention, but truth be told, weather-predicting woodchucks are a dime a dozen (see Shubenacadie Sam, Wiarton Willie, General Beauregard Lee). In our rainy climate, we prefer a more amphibian take on meteorology, specifically, a revered bullfrog named Snohomish Slew.

This article originally appeared on Avvo.com. We’ve all been there, standing face to face with the oh-so-friendly sales associate desperately pitching the brand’s latest deal for “buy one, get one free” or “spend this, get these reward points” that will, according to the salesperson, “save you tons of money in the long run!”
Yeah, right.

After two New York City police officers were shot and killed on Saturday, King County deputies are showing their support and donning mourning bands across their badges. KING 5 reports that the deputies have been instructed "to wear the mourning bands until midnight on the day of the last funeral in New York."

Quick quiz: What’s the most expensive housing market in North America? If you answered Beverly Hills, San Francisco or Manhattan, thank you for playing.It’s actually Vancouver, British Columbia, a city where the median income is a relatively modest $71,000 and plain Jane single-family houses in good neighborhoods sell for more than $1 million.

Two historic enemies recently achieved a remarkable détente. The agreement grabbed headlines, but for many, the topic was inherently a snoozer: an alliance between the ports of Seattle and Tacoma. It might sound yawn-inducing, but it could be a harbinger of a major—and positive—shift in regional dynamics. In the new deal, the two ports will act cooperatively in competing and managing the movement of cargo in and out of the region.

It’s not just you. Pretty much everyone hates Comcast. The super-scientific method of confirming this—checking Yelp reviews—turns up a cascade of comments like these: “If I could, I would rate Comcast below negative,” and “Literally the worst company I’ve ever had to work with,” and “If there were any other option, I’d take it.”You could call Comcast the second-most-hated company in America. The American Customer Satisfaction Index ranked it second from the bottom—only Time Warner Cable scored lower—across all industries.

A proposed 95 percent tax on electronic cigarettes and other vapor products has local shops that sell e-cigarettes in a tizzy. The tax hike is part of Governor Jay Inslee's buget plan, which was announced yesterday. KING 5 reports the American Vaping Association (yes, that's a thing) says that Inslee's proposal would " nearly [double] the price of nicotine-free vapor products."